The Boy Who Cried Bitch

Watching The Boy Who Cried Bitch left me with the same reaction after seeing Hal Hartley's "Trust" more than fifteen years ago.

"Where are the awards?"

1991 was quite a year for these grim, character-driven indie films. As "Silence of the Lambs" dominated the year critically, films like Trust and The Boy Who Cried Bitch were hanging from the helicopter rafters of Hollywood. With its modest production value and emphasis on the performances of the actors, this family drama offers more of a meditation of childhood mental health within the context of family dysfunction. It's terse and brilliant script penned by Catherine May Levin, was supposedly based on true events but I cannot find a lot of other information about the author. Is she the mother of a child with a mental illness? Was she the child, but she made the character into a boy for the film? I don't know how this story connects to her life and I am interested in knowing more about the author because it really is a well-written piece of celluloid

While the leading role of the stuttering, violent, maladjusted Dan Love - played bey Harley Cross receives most of the well-deserved accolades, the real show stealer here is the role of Candice Love, the mother played by Karen Young. This is truly one of the most riveting performances I've seen in years. Imagine the commanding, emotional range of Sally Field without the ham. Her eye movements, the delivery of the lines, her intermittent shifts between mania hopelessness. The acting is stellar all around. I would also like to give an honorable mention to Dennis Boutsikaris. He has really locked himself into quite an archetype as the soft-spoken yet arrogant Dr. Orin Fell the head psychologist of the mental hospital that Dan is confined in. He exudes a soft-evil, a passive-aggressive, manipulative agent of authority not too far from his characters portrayed in "The Dream Team" and in "Better Call Saul."

The main drawback of this film is the production quality which is fortunately saved by the performances and the script. A better sound design could have been implemented. There are scenes where the boom mic is in the shot and there is a great presence of hisses when the actors say their "s" and "p" sounds. Aside from that, I would highly recommend this film. If you are a fan of the "troubled-teen-trying-to-adjust" trope in cinema, like Good Will Hunting, White Oleander, etc., then The Boy Who Cried Bitch offers a much more harrowing, less Hollywood-feel-good, approach to this difficult subject.

The Boy Who Cried Bitch was an extremely limited release film from 1991. It was playing in one theater in Manhattan and I saw it four times. It features a terrific performance by Harley Cross as the disturbed child. The film is very depressing. It never was released on any format and I rarely find other people who know anything about it. I'd love to find a copy. I highly recommend this film.

i bought a copy of this movie at ebay. i did not expect much from that title and to my big surprise it turned out to be a great psychological thriller. i can't believe that this movie did not find any distributor. if i had the money i would distribute it myself... my advice, if you get the chance to watch it then don't miss it. i also liked that movie because it shows a huge famelyproblem. a problem i'm experiencing in my own family too. it shows how hard it is for a family to live with a emotional disturbed child. you can't just get rid of your own kids by putting them into a psychic institution. i mean their your kids and you love them. however, thanks god that my problem is not as big as the mothers problem in that movie. and that is the shocking thing about that movie. it is made so realistic and the plot and actors are also very realistic so it scared me...

After seeing the Boy Who Cried Bitch, you might be left wondering what happened in 1991 that they couldn't release this film. This movie is one of the few effortlessly fused Theater Release with TV Movie of the Week that perhaps it lost it's footing in both venues. A shame that more people didn't get the chance to see what is surely a great performance by a young Harley Cross. This is before "Shriek If you know what I did Last Friday the 13th" but shortly after Believers.

Harley was a young actor to watch with notable films "Cohen and Tate" peeking with "Perdita Durango" and an otherwise downward slide to obscurity since. He certainly shines in this role as a confused and psychotic adolescent on the brink of madness struggling to find a place in the outside that compliments his inner demons. Rarely have we seen a young actor display such range and for this reason alone, this movie should have shucked the title and some of the cursing for something a bit more palatable to the mainstream public.

BWCB was unique in that it explored some of the complexities of child abuse, manic depression and a mother's ultimate failure to connect with her child in a way that is not cliché. For example a good scene early on has Dan (Cross) being seduced by a groundskeeper who obviously tries to fill a father's role and lure the boy into a man-boy relationship. Dan turns the power position around and immediately uses the man for beer and food for his brothers and friends. This film takes an honest look at young teens, not shying away from the way they talk and the amount of insight they have with their adult relationships.

I recommend this film for those looking for a good hearted, insightful, sometimes dark and emotional journey through a troubled teen's life.

6/10 Maddis

Just to say it´s one of the greatest movies ever for me. I have seen it at least ten times and even more the last 15 minutes, a truly spine-chilling end. Any adjective to describe the sound track would be incomplete and, above all, the main actor performance is a lesson to Hollywood business empty 'big' stars Russell Crowe, Brad Pitt, etc, etc ..

Impossible to find it in video/DVD, it´s unknown even for movie rental shops. A real real pity.